78. Welcome to DU, YeahSureRight!

Glad you're here. I've carried that in my heart ever since that bastard won in 1980. Hell, even before that, since we were blighted by him in California when he was governor. I thought he was the most dangerous man in America, if not the world, because of the oh-so-smooth and slick way he sold toxic and inhumane and downright un-Christian ideas and concepts to voters that they embraced with open arms as though it were free money - when it was always the worst thing possible that could be done to them, and against every last one of their best interests. Wrapped it all up like shiny objects in red-white-and-blue fairy tales, and people ate it up from coast-to-coast. Lulled them into brainless acceptance with his aw-shucks shtick and his amiable, harmless, kindly old uncle routine. And most of America fell for it, head first. Worst thing EVER to happen to our country. And we did it to ourselves.

99. Yeah, I loathed him when he was Governor of CA, and I didn't live there. Bill is spot on about RR.

He committed the first blatant theft of the presidency with Iran/Contra. All of these sob's came out of Nixon's day.

People looking for a daddy figure bought his acting that was presented by a fawning media following Segretti's ratfucking rules to demonize Carter. He was the end of Fairness Doctrine and it's gone downhill since.

My life was the best it'd ever been in the Carter years with the movement for worker rights, less discrimination and a nation working to save its environment. This monster showed ups. Many Democrats bought his song and dance and voted for him.

They voted GOP after that, with the Atwater's strategy in place. I can't stand the sight of him. When I heard they might put him on a stamp or a coin, after seeing all the temples of Ronnie worship across the country, from airports and such, followed by the Bush temples of worship, I was beyond stunned.

It used to be things were not named after someone until they died, it was not seemly, but the GOP could not wait to enshrine their gods. Whenever I see either of their names, it's like living it all over again.

An entire generation think what he did, and what the Tea Party does, is perfectly okay. But then, they never knew anything better.

25. Like the usual place

8. pretty frightening

that people hold the pauls as the standard for what libertarianism is...
expecially rand.. cause hes not...
lol
I think itd be interesting to hear what folks who thought of themselves as that label during the 60s think of these guys now..

In the furor over his firing by ABC, he pretty much spelled out a litany of his own right-of-center , pro-military positions that... he argued... should have mitigated his factual and accurate ( but politically unspeakable) comments about the WTC attack.

17. How does any of that discount what Maher said in the video?

20. I notice Graham the troll

...doesn't try to dispute what Reagan did to this country, but instead makes a half-assed attempt to muddy the waters by speculating who Maher voted for 30 years ago.. But then again, that's all trolls are good for; to try to distract a legitimate discussion with inane distractions...

Confession here: I supported that piece of shit Reagan during his first campaign, when I was 13 and didn't know any better. I got over any sympathy I might've had for the right-wingers when I was old enough to understand the nature of actually working for a living, so I can honestly say the repugs never got a single vote out of me, and never will.

64. people who voted for Reagan/Bush/NaderEisenhower/Nixon got 100% OF what they wanted to get.

which is keeping the democratic party out of office

actions beget consequences.

and maybe I made a typo, but in a million years, I would never make a protest vote for anyone
being that 100 out of 100 times, the protest votes help the opposition, as the war protesters did when they
sold LBJ down the river to vote Nixon in and their protest led to the war going on another six years.

76. anyone voting for Reagan got exactly what they voted for.

and I don't need to listen to 3rd party ites, Naderites, Paulites, or Jill Stine ites.
don't care 1% about their agendas, as it is against every single thing I believe in.

which is keeping Barack Obama's agenda going forward forever.

Inconvieneint truths the 3rd party people/altmedia want people to forget.
Look how Glenn G. manipulated old numbers so he could sell his libertarian wares.

how transparent. Bill Maher speaks out of both sides too every single day.

And gets paid MILLIONS for his big mouth.

Me, I never watch him, because consistently, I didn't like him in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, or today.
His biggest claim to fame was in that movie D.C. Cab. with Whitman Mayo the reason I went to see it.
(the director later made Batman).

32. Reagan got 50.8% of the vote

Carter only got 41%, though, so it was still a huge margin. Moderate Republican turned Independent John Anderson got 6.6% of the vote, including my father, who had always voted Democrat until then. He didn't like Carter, but didn't trust Reagan, either.

109. The gap in the figures I quoted? Those were Anderson's. RR got 91% electoral votes & 48 states

or something around 48.

Anderson's effect is in the missing percentages, of course.

RR won in a HUGE LANDSLIDE. 91% of the electoral votes. And you would say that's a landslide, if it were someone YOU had voted for. Oh, and he also won the popular vote. Not that that matters that much, since we have an electoral college system. But it helps a candidate to have also won the popular vote, like Reagan did.

68. That's wishful thinking.

If every Anderson vote had gone to Carter, Reagan still would have won.

"Minus the sabotage of the Hostage" negotiations: That would have required exposure while it was happening, which wasn't particularly likely what with Bush being a former CIA director, and a lot of intelligence people ticked off at Carter and Ramsey Clarke.

And for lack of investigation you're blaming the ACLU? What about all the mainstream party Democrats, the forerunners of the current "centrists", who made sure investigations never dug too deep, and never went to the jugular. It wasn't the ACLU who said the following in 1986:

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), noting that he served in the Cabinet of Republican President Richard M. Nixon, urged President Reagan on Saturday to "clean house," saying, "This nation does not need and does not want another failed presidency."

Portraying the crisis over secret arms deals with Iran and clandestine payments to Nicaraguan rebels as transcending partisan politics, Moynihan told Reagan that "your presidency, sir, is tottering." And he added, "We want you to save your presidency, our presidency."

I recall that John Kerry's investigations of Reagan were continually marginalized by the Democratic leadership.

I recall that once Bill Clinton came into office -- meaning that the targets of the investigations were no longer in a position to obstruct those investigations -- his people were specifically asked about getting to the bottom of a multitude of Reagan/Bush scandals, and the word was that "that's just not on their radar screen". "Look forward, not back" Version 1.0. You remember how the appreciative Republicans thanked him, right?

But hey, rather than hold the party leadership to account for their lack of action and even cooperation, why not grind some axes, eh?

75. Fine by me. He's not who I was talking to. I was talking to everyone else.

There's a lot of convenient misremembering about the 1980 election, by both Republicans and Democrats. Which is a damn shame, because what happened then -- not just in the election, but in the internal dynamics of both parties -- are what set us on our current trajectory.

77. I forgave Teddy, but it should have been Carter/Kennedy (and they should have given Mondale another)

the childish antics on both democratic sides helped lose

and anyone silly enough to vote for Reagan got exactly what they got (same as in 2009 and not voting for Corzine, bad as he might have been to some, anyone voting for Chris Christie
would be getting what they got)

69. I think it would have been close

if the hostage rescue hadn't been a disaster (which many took as a symbol of the inept Carter administration), it would have been close.

However, while Carter had a lot of good ideas, he wasn't an inspiring leader and Teddy Kennedy running to his left hurt Carter with the Democratic base. As I said above, my father always voted Democratic prior to 1980, but voted Anderson in 1980 because he didn't trust Reagan and didn't like Carter and his religiousness. If Anderson wasn't there, he probably would not have voted out of frustration. Kennedy running in 1980 would have been the equivalent of Bernie Sanders or Sheldon Whitehouse (northeastern liberal) mounting a serious primary challenge to Obama in 2012. It would have highlighted the differences between Obama and a "true" liberal and possibly turned off the base that turned out so well in 2008 and 2012.

86. Reagan's numbers ticked up markedly right at the beginning of November...

...which I view as the effect of the often-talked-about "October Surprise" (Carter securing a peaceful, negotiated release of the Iran embassy hostages before the election) wasn't going to happen, which simply reinforced the image of Carter as weak and ineffectual. That, in turned, tipped a lot fence-sitters over to tough-talking Reagan.

30. Getting up off the floor

41. Was graham for Ronnie? I sure wasn't. Obama, I think he voted Reagan if he even bothered

to vote back then, he has evaded the question many times, and he has praised Ronnie repeatedly. Bill votes Democratic, you are making up baseless libels. The man discusses his positions in clear language on national TV. You on the other hand say you support both Hillary and the woman who says Hilliary is a monster, you are for anything. Where do you stand? Is Power correct and Clinton is a monster, or is HIllary 80/2 Super Good? Can't have anything in reality Graham, which of the two do you stand with?

117. A lot of people here will give you a list of staffers guilty of crimes during Reagan but,....

...it's nice now and then to remember that whole "dottering old man" crap was a defense to keep his fake cowboy ass out of jail.

The Reagan years was the dawn of a whole new era in Republican politics. You could show someone a film of them accepting money in the form of used greenbacks in a brown grocery bag to bite the heads off of kittens and then show the actual act in all it's bloody chinned glory and all the Republican had to say was, "I don't recall" and they got off with an apology for having been bothered.

38. True. But I do think he wasn't as extreme as current tea partiers, like Cruz. nt

45. I do not fully agree with you. Some quotes from the Gipper

"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966

"If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with."
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), cited in the San Francisco Chronicle, early morning edition, May 15, 1969. (Reagan reveals how he intends to quell student protests in the city of Berkeley, California. Protesters were teargassed and fired upon with buckshot, killing one, blinding another, and wounding 128. Reagan would later declare a state of emergency in the city and send in 2,700 National Guard troops.)

"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
--Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965
http://thereaganyears.tripod.com/reaganquotes.htm

The first outside the home political action I ever took part in was in elementary school, letters to Gov Reagan when he cut some subsidy for low income kids to get milk at lunch.

105. He was complicit in the genocide of indigenous peoples in Central and South America.

Under him and Bush I, they empowered death squads to slaughter whole villages including American activists and church missionaries and priests who stood in their way, including Archbishop Romero. In Guatemala alone, 200,000 perished from his policies. That monster could swim for days in the blood he was responsible for shedding.

108. Yes. Far right. All about money and the privileged. But not wacko, & he would compromise....

a word that isn't even in the vocabulary of tea partiers. I also do think he thought his way was best for the country (what was best for the rich was, by definition, best for the country) & that he thought he was a patriot. He was very wrong and didn't see or care about the harm he was doing, but he WOULD compromise to get something done, since govt had to function, in his opinion.

150. History

Reagan was a moron controlled by corporations and power-hungry Republicans who got their asses handed to them in the '60s and '70s and never got over it. 30-year bonds peaked at 14% and Volker did his job of killing inflation. Carter broke th backs of OPEC with energy-saving policies that also killed oil prices a d inflation. Carter was a moral and intelligent president--- I voted for him twice and knew Reagan was just an actor playing president, not a true leader.

15. Time

It is about time someone with a name says what so many of us have been saying, reagan was a piece of shit. He did more to destroy the working man in this country than anyone could, and yet convince the same working people it was best for them to lose what they had, there is a special place in hell for reagan.

19. Seriously!

Once he got started, I didn't think he would stop! His rants have not been very good of late, but last night's made up for it and then some. Also, made up for the lousy panel he had on last night (besides Tom Shadyac, of course.) "Real time" sometimes reminds me of the Sunday morning TV line-up.

26. Best Anti-Reagan Rant Ever!

I absolutely cannot find anything positive to say about that POS Reagan. He is the main reason I'm estranged from my family. Reagan Democrats are indeed the epitome of the Tea Party. Best line - "They even tried to elect Reagan's haircut".

128. Gave. As in infected. n/t

35. And every word is absolutely right on.

A week or so another DUer posted something on the great Gil-Scott Heron (best known for "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"). Heron did a bit on Reagan called "B Movie" that really compliments this story.

47. A genius, and this piece is brilliant.

39. Amazing how many peasants still love their oppressors and hate the oppressed (from 2011).

Reagan was a "divide-and-conquer" master, playing on working/middle class white's hatred and distrust of anyone he deemed "lesser" and "lazy".

His PR team successfully painted the modern Republicans as take-charge he-men cowboys and Democrats as everything from effete pantywaist elitists to communist subversives, a myth that still holds true today with many Americans.

He governed using ramped-up 50's fear and the threat of nuclear holocaust, something our society and children stressed out over all through the 80s.

He made racism acceptable, the wealthy as benevolent overlords (who he ushered in the White House to permanently camp and "advise") and Horatio Alger as a tongue-in-cheek blueprint for all American workers . . . the idea that with just the right amount of pluck and extremely hard work, anyone can make it big.

Long after he was out of office and well on the journey into cerebral oblivion, Reagan's long stenchy shadow unfortunately looms over American life. Even though political parties have changed, Reaganomics never LEFT. We STILL practice this incredibly destructive pure Freidmanite capitalism despite all evidence that it's killing economic progress for everyone except a select few, whose incomes and wealth are inflating daily.

We still constantly have to be at WAR with someone, support dictatorships and exploit cheap resources and labor.

This backwards wooden fundamentalist puppet ruined and continues to ruin America. Reagan was a lousy president, a twisted human being and a laughingstock. While still following and lauding his supposed "legacy", America will remain a laughingstock also.

62. On every major national problem you can trace its source back to the early 1980s.

70. He's Right

I am not sure Bill Maher has said anything more accurate. I had been thinking what Maher said since people started saying that Ronald Reagan would not fit into Today's Republican Party. Everything Maher said was right. Although some past Republicans would not be able to be a part of today's Republican Party Ronald Reagan would fit into today's Republican Party.

91. I will not forgive Bill

For ignoring the October Surprise of GHWB's trips promising Iran a better deal in arms for hostages than Carter thus ending Carter's chances for hostages home before election day gambit.

Ronnie the Raygun never would have sniffed the air inside the Whitehouse if Carter had negotiated the hostages return but NOBODY wants to talk about it.

This interference is endemic to the GOP. What infuriates me further at Bill and every other lame-O liberal pundit is complete ignorance and avoidance of the Nixon Treason setting the template with his '68 election.

The only "history" anybody remembers is that Ronnie killed the Soviet Union.

100. Ronald Reagan was an actor who read the lines he was given,

He would have read a Meow Mix jingle at the State of the Union if that was what he was given. I interviewed a number of Reagan staffers while writing about the original Free Trade agreements and most gave me the sense he had to be beaten over the head to express an opinion on anything.

104. "The far right becomes the new middle"

106. I've been saying this all along.

Of course he would have fit in with today's GOP. He race-baited against Black folks in an attempt to stir up resentment among White conservatives, he was the architect of trickle-down (as he drastically lowered top taxes from how they were under his predecessor Carter), and he was a war hawk. To say that he wouldn't fit in the GOP is totally misguided. He was just as much of a crook as most of today's elected Republicans.
Reagan is to the GOP what JFK and FDR are to most Democrats.

120. Saint Ronnie addresses the Congressional Medal of Honor Society

Sometimes these set pieces could land Reagan in trouble, when they became ingrained in his memory. My bureau chief at the time, the late Lars-Erik Nelson, was struck by a story that Reagan told in a speech to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society -- a story that he had used on more than one occasion -- about the captain of a B-17 during World War II whose plane had been hit and, unable to free a trapped ball-turret gunner from his seat, told him, "Never mind son, we'll ride it down together."

Except that Lars could not find any account matching that after checking the 434 citations for Congressional Medals of Honor issued up to that time. A reader wrote to Lars, saying that the story resembled a scene in the 1944 movie "A Wing and a Prayer," starring Dana Andrews, in which the pilot of a Navy torpedo bomber rode the stricken plane down with his wounded radioman and said, "We'll take this ride together." Lars also followed a lead that the story came from a Reader's Digest article that recounted another, similar incident, but which the author was not able to verify. (Reagan was an avid reader of The Digest, but Lou Cannon noted that the disclaimer about the story's accuracy had been omitted in the magazine's abridged version).

135. Godfather of Conservatives Goldwater says:

"Today’s so-called ‘conservatives’ don’t even know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all.” ~Barry Goldwater

“Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.” ~Jimmy Carter
“Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.”
~Lyndon Johnson
“A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
“A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.” ~Woodrow Wilson
“I like that about the Republicans; the evidence does not faze them, they are not bothered at all by the facts.” ~Bill Clinton
. “A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.”
~Woodrow Wilson
“Even as someone who’s labeled a conservative – I’m a Republican, I’m black, I’m heading up this organization in the Reagan administration – I can say that conservatives don’t exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they’re welcome.” ~Clarence Thomas
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” ~John Kenneth Galbraith
“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? It’s about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them.”~Harry Truman
“A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.” ~Leo Rosten
“Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.” ~George Will
“Republicans don’t like people who talk about depressions. You can hardly blame them for that. You remember the old saying: Don’t talk about rope in the house where somebody has been hanged.” ~Harry Truman
“You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.”~JacquelineKennedy Onassis
“Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, “Two cars in every garage”. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, “Two families in every garage”.”~Harry Truman.“Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.”~Lyndon Johnson

136. Coming unglued over at "newsbusters"...reich wing web site.

I've gotten booted three time from their site for simply stating an opposing view. You get attacked like jumping into a den of rabid wolves. Oh well.
Occasionally I jump over to see just what is given them their daily dose of "OUTRAGE", and Maher managed to do it with his opinion of st. ronnie. Holy cripes, you would think we defamed Jesus and his whole family. Such dim witted loons.

When Governor Reagan emptied the mental institutions in CA, instantly creating an underclass of mentally ill homeless, then proceeded to dismantle what were once the best public schools in the country, it was the beginning of the end for the once truly Golden State. We are still trying to claw back out of the ditch he and his worshipers (particularly those who gave us Prop. 13) drove my state into.